A cyber-physical system deployment based on pull strategies for one-of-a-kind production with limited resources

In smart manufacturing practices, finding a balance between the size of cyber-physical system (CPS) deployment and the performance of production systems is the preliminary goal pursued by some small or medium-sized one-of-a-kind production enterprises with limited resources in implementing the transformation of smart production systems. To achieve this goal, we first address the pull control strategies in lean production systems as a principle to guide the CPS deployment for shop floors. Specifically, we use the Path-based bottleneck (PBB), Constant work-in-process (CONWIP), and Capacity-slack CONWIP (CSC) as pull CPS deployment schemes, in which the CSC is a modified CONWIP strategy that integrates the order review function of the PBB. We summarize the characteristics of these pull control strategies and analyze important roles in guiding the CPS deployment. Then, we compare the performance of the three pull control strategies by simulation. Our findings show that it is feasible to get the balance between the size of CPS deployment and the system performance through a suitable pull control strategy to guide CPS deployment. Finally, we introduce a case of a strander manufacturer and use the case data to estimate the performance and implementation costs of the CPS deployment schemes which are guided by pull control strategies.